Set Me Free
by RuinofDarkness
Summary: Sora, Kairi, and Riku disappear from the Destiny Islands.  Their journey to return home is stranger than their adventures before.  It's not as lame as it sounds, but chapters will be slow!
1. Chapter 1

Set Me Free

**Well, this idea has been in my head for years. It's fully fleshed in my mind, I just have to write it. If I get enough reviews, I'll continue more often. I'll try to get a chapter out a week, but I promise nothing! Anyway, enjoy ;3**

Chapter 1

The day was bright and pleasantly warm. The palms of the trees were swaying ever lightly in the cool breeze, and the gulls overhead were squawking themselves into a frenzy. The island was small, very small. It had the wood-workings of young ones. Boards and planks were built onto, around, and along the laying of the enormous rocks the island harbored. These pieces of wood connected, and created a maze of small cubbies and rooms. Roofs were also included into their simple but effective designs. Wonderful and lively tropical plant life had also found their way in growing with the lay of the rocks, adding colorful greens into the island's beauty.

Though humble, this island contained the most precious of memories. Generations of children had played here, each of them adding to the island's charm, and to its unique physical appearance. However, the most recent of all the island's young persons, left the biggest and most enduring impression. Their smiles and frowns, their games, and their hopes…From the simplest to the more complicated, those three children gouged their adventures into the island's stony-heart.

One was a girl, and the other two were boys who often competed for her attention and affection…

"Sora!"

Sora jolted into consciousness. Looking up, he gazed into a pair of indigo eyes.

"Geez, Kairi," Sora groaned. "You scared me."

Kairi laughed. The sounds of her giggles were like the sun's light reflecting off clouds.

"Well," she said, "you just lying here was just too irresistible an opportunity."

"Ha-ha," Sora replied pulling himself into a stand.

"Come on!" Kairi shouted over shoulder as she began to run down the beach. "Riku's waiting for us!"

So as Sora bounded after Kairi, the two of them raced along the shoreline with the waves occasionally splashing onto their shoes.

Finally the pair reached Riku, who was sitting in his usual spot on the angled palm tree.

"I...almost..." Kairi pants, "beat you that time!"

"Almost," Sora replies, very out of breath himself. Kairi was becoming lightning fast! "But not yet!"

"So, what were doing these past two hours, Sora?" Riku asks while hopping off the palm tree.

"I found him napping on the sand," Kairi tells him. "Good thing, too, or he would have suffered the worst sunburn!"

Riku chuckles, and then asks. "What were you dreaming about, Sora?"

Sora glances at Kairi, who returns his glance with a worried look, and then he turns his view back to Riku.

"Uh," Sora stammers. "I didn't dream. I was sleeping pretty hard."

Riku gave him a skeptic look, silver eyebrows raised.

"Are you positive?"

"Very."

Riku sighs, and then says to Sora:

"Whatever you say. Anyway, the folks are waiting for us. That's why we came looking for you."

"Yep!" Kairi adds. "Now let's go!"

And Kairi bounded down to the wooden hut, which had a door leading to the other side of the island.

Sora went to follow, but Riku grabbed him firmly by the arm.

"Hey, what the..."

"Tell me," Riku demanded, his face not an inch away from Sora's, green eyes stern and glaring. "Tell me about your dream."

"Riku, I already told you-"

"You were lying, Sora!" Riku yelled at him. "I know you, and I saw that look you gave Kairi!"

Sora gulped, the saliva in his mouth had begun to pool in curious amounts.

"Tell me."

Sora sighs, and whispers:

"We were wrapped in green light. But it was only you and me. Kairi wasn't anywhere near us. We went searching for her, but the green light ended to a black void that looked filled with other lights. We both sensed she was somehow wrapped in one of the other lights, but we couldn't escape the green one..."

"We were trapped," Riku said looking away from Sora's face, pulling his hands away from Sora's arms. "And in our frustrations, we started fighting. And we weren't ourselves. We were other people."

"How do you know that, Riku?" Sora asked.

"Because I had the same dream, Sora," Riku replied quietly. "I fear that something is going to happen again. And what if we can't find Kairi this time? What if-"

"Hey, wait," Sora butted in. "It was only a dream. Forget it."

"A dream that we both had?" Shouted Riku in an angry burst. "This can't be something we can just shrug off! This is serious!"

"Riku, this could have been just a portrayal of our feelings when we couldn't get home. It doesn't mean something else bad will happen."

Riku looked down, his face scrunched into a mad pinch. He took a deep breath, brought his face back up, and said:

"We're not to tell Kairi anything. This is between you and me. We forget it. Throw it out the window."

Sora nodded with a white smile.

"Yeah! Now let's catch up with Kairi. She'll probably be steaming when she finds out we didn't even try to race her to the boat."

"Steaming?" Riku asked. "She'll laugh herself silly when I tell her you fell into the ocean, and that I had to dive in and save you."

"She won't buy that!" Sora retorted, laughing himself. "I'm not even-"

Riku then cut Sora off and shoved him off the raised plump of rocks and sand. Sora landed with a splash and a "Hey!"

"Now she'll believe me," Riku laughed and also ran toward the wooden hut.

"Hey!" Sora yelled and chased after Riku. "You can't win! Then I'll be the rotten egg!"

"Better you than me!"

And the two boys ran to catch up with Kairi. The sun still shone high overhead in the cloudless, blue sky.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author Note: I must apologize for the delay! The military never ceases to surprise you. Not only that, but I've been spending a lot of time with a friend who needs me right now; he'll be leaving for Japan soon, and the internet in our barracks really effin' sucks! AH! Anyway, onward! To my single reviewer, GameSpazzer, thank you again for reviewing. It was very encouraging and I had you in mind the entire time I was typing this out. I hope that it is to your liking, because I had a blast writing it.**

Chapter 2

Sora and Riku started out before sunrise. The time they had spent away from home had matured them, disciplined them, so there were no issues of sleeping in late. Sora's mother had packed the two a large basket, filled with goodies to last them a lifetime, it seemed. Inside, hearty homemade bread, a variety of dried fruit, a bit of dried meat, some puff pastries made with paopu, and then water flavored with mint for the heat of the day.

There was silence for the first few hours, the sun rose steadily, giving the water a brilliant green sheen, and the boys had already caught three fish an arm's length. Sora was just thinking of those heavenly soft puff pastries, and shuffling through the different ways he could eat them when Riku called his attention.

"Sora, look!"

Securing his pole to the boat and standing up, Sora looked over to where Riku was pointing. In the sky, directly above their boat, what looked like a black tear, coming from what Sora could grimly guess, was inching its way from its high spot seemingly reaching out to them.

"We've got to get out of here!" Riku cried as he immediately grabbed an oar and gestured with it toward Sora. "Grab yours and come on!"

Sora needed not to be told twice. He snatched up his oar and began rowing when something _thumped_ into their boat. A massive glob of the black had landed onto their vessel, and was moving around of its own will. Within its inky depths, one could see brief colors of violet and gray, giving it more a mystical than hellish aura. A tentacle-like appendage appeared on the glob's shifting surface, twisting around until it stopped and seemed to look at the two boys. The boat had been rocking violently while the glob had been moving, but now that it remained still, the glob did not seem to be so scary anymore.

Almost tentatively, the appendage moved toward Sora. Riku's face was of anguish.

"Sora, no!" Riku shouted, and as he went to call upon his weapon, the appendage suddenly lurched toward him, grabbing around the waist tight. Riku struggled vainly, and gasped as the tentacle-like arm squished him.

Sora then called upon his keyblade, but suddenly another arm was there, wrapping itself around Sora's head. It began growing, and Sora could feel his head and then his body becoming engulfed with the warm, terrifying, and somehow soothing, black mass. Within his mind he saw the stars, zooming past them he saw the each of their worlds, and finally Sora saw the great pulsations emanating off of a distant planet. He thought frantically of Riku. _What is happening to Riku? What in all the worlds is happening to me? What are these visions?_

The last thing Sora remembered before the shadows completely overtook his mind was a powerful yet radiant woman's face. Her eyes were green.

Kairi helped her mother with all day with the painting. Their house slowly changed from its faded white to its new bright yellow. Finally, the two completed the transformation of their house. Now it was time to clean up. Kairi was grateful to be done. They painted the house a lot of a faster than she had expected. It was now just a bit after lunch hour and they had started at dawn.

"It'll be happy,'' Her mother had said while wiping a bit of sweat off her brow, "the house will be happy all the time now, like the sun."

Together the two of them grabbed all the paint gear, making a few trips to their shed and back, to return the paint brushes (after a good washing), the ladder, and the paint's buckets, which were now properly re-sealed, to their original places within the plain but sturdy shed.

"Ahh," Kairi's mother sighed, "all finished. Let's go clean up and have some lunch, my paupau." Kairi's mother then moved toward the way of the house, going a slow, content pace.

As Kairi made to follow her mother, a feeling ripped into her mind and left her gasping, hands and knees, on the grassy earth. Her mother rushed back to her daughter, a hand on her daughter's back.

"What is it, Kairi?" Her mother asked desperately, blue eyes wide with worry. "What's wrong?"

Despite her mental affliction, her mind reeling with contradictory feelings, Kairi replied thus:

"Sora and Riku…They're gone…Again…"

Kairi felt her mind's fatigue overcoming her now, and as she felt herself falling, she knew what she must do.

_Riku…Sora…I will meet you in the darkness. I will save you and bring you home again!_

**Thank you for reading! Please leave any kind of review! They are always very motivating!**

_**~If there are any critiques to be had, I will gladly take them. Please don't hesitate to scrutinize me, I will use anything to better my writing.~ **_


	3. Chapter 3

**I know that I haven't updated in a long time, but this story does live still. I have been going through a lot of emotional battles within myself, and I hope that my few reviewers understand. Enjoy this if possible, and let me know if you find anything that needs correcting.**

**Love, **

**RuinofDarkness**

Set Me Free

Chapter 3

Cloud awoke suddenly, the dew of the night clinging to his forehead where it peaked out from under his wool blanket. His dreams had continually become more disturbing night after night. Cloud's mind struggled to piece together the flashes of images he _could_ remember from these _visions_. A woman's face, a black mass, a green light…

Exhaling loudly, Cloud grudgingly pulled his blanket off of himself. Cloud did not wear socks when he slept, so as he shifted his feet from the futon and onto the floor, they were shocked with cold from its wooden planks. This caused a fierce shiver to wrench Cloud's entire body. His face remained calm and unresponsive. One looking at Cloud would never think that he could even feel the cold, let alone shiver. He had a stern look to him, and his eyes were of blue ice.

There had been strange stirrings on Gaia lately. Only yesterday, Cloud had a blast from his past: he had met with none other than Rufus Shinra. He apparently had survived the destruction of his giant cannon in Junon those two years ago, and had begged Cloud for his assistance in "rebuilding" their world. Cloud scoffed in his mind at this phrasing. "Rebuilding", _yeah right_.

Rufus kept himself concealed under a blanket. It didn't take much for Cloud to figure out why. Rufus was infected with Geostigma. A black infectious menace, Geostigma plagued many of the world's people as of late. It caused physical disfigurement and weakness. These ailments were its more obvious effects. Its true evil face showed itself to the victim's mind, causing madness. Cloud personally knew much of the mental agonies that Geostigma enacted.

The sudden appearance of Rufus Shinra was not the only object of concern to Cloud as of yesterday, however. On his way to Healin (On his bike, Fenrir), Cloud had encountered shadow darting monsters, with three silver-haired men in apparent control. Each had the green cat slit eyes, the cunning smile, and the fluid, powerful movements. They were all in some way, _him._ Along with these shadow monsters, the men had armed themselves with gun blades, which were used with terrible accuracy. If Cloud hadn't had SOLDIER reflexes, he would be dead. A part of Cloud knew though, that these men did not want to kill him. They were testing him, trying him out. _Learning him._

Then there was the smallest one, the one Rufus called _Kadaj_. He was the leader of the reminiscent trio. Cloud had not faced him; he only could see this Kadaj from a distance. His SOLDIER vision allowed him to see him clear enough to make out a strong figure, with his silver hair gently moving against his face. Kadaj, before mounting his own bike and riding away, seemed to regard Cloud with a kind of amusement. As if hiding a funny secret_. How_ exactly Cloud knew that this mysterious man was amused was not entirely beyond him. Cloud had a gut feeling that his Geostigma was partly responsible for this strange extrasensory evaluation.

Grayness had replaced the stars that peeked from the gapes in the church roof, reminding Cloud that time went on, and these new problems would only add to the burdens he already bore. Cloud pulled on his black socks, and then his black boots; gloves and sword belt came after. Cloud put away his sleeping things: his single wool blanket and thin futon. They were tucked away neatly in a small closet that he had discovered in this part of the church, a small room hidden in the back. Once stowed, Cloud opened the peeling door, stepped through the doorway, and proceeded to close the door behind him as he left to begin another day.

Cloud stopped before the lilies, white and yellow, in reverence and respect as he always did in the mornings before departing. A little reminder of a precious friend. Walking around their little domain, Cloud exited the broken house of worship. What horizon he could see had turned orange now. Cloud felt nothing for the rising sun. There was very little of that sort of thing that held any pleasant feelings for him anymore. Two years after fighting, and Cloud still couldn't face his inner demons. It was his fault the two of them were dead.


	4. Chapter 4

**Set Me Free**

**It has been awhile, hasn't it? Well, I haven't forgotten about this little puppy...I got a new follow/favorite, and that does motivate me to continue. It lets me know that I have something good on my hands, and for the new favorite, I am grateful. Thank you for the patience and continued support.**

Chapter 4

Kadaj took his brothers to the Ancient City. Leafless pale trees surrounded a serene pool of crystal clear water, which held a small land out-cropping that bore an ancient building. If one could call it a building. To Kadaj, it looked more like a massive ocean shell with one of its ends shoved into the earth. It was pretty he guessed, for heathens.

Kadaj's brothers, Loz and Yazoo, had gathered all of their potential brethren. Kadaj knew Mother had plans for them. For what other reason had she marked them with her dark mark? Even Kadaj had experienced the plague himself when he was growing up in his confined, black world. Of course, Kadaj and his siblings would have some rites of passage to have these new siblings undergo if they wanted to win Mother's approval…

"Ow!"

Loz had brought back an unmarked one. To this, Kadaj frowned. At first glance Kadaj thought her rather plain; this girl, fragile; small; with a pale complexion, brown eyes, hair, and clothes of white. That was before he saw her pink ribbon. Loz was shoving her close to the behemoth conch wall (This was "his" spot, far from the pool of water. Something about the constant clarity unsettled Loz. Kadaj did not have time to ponder Loz's strange habits.), and that's when Kadaj saw it. The girl had a pink ribbon in her hair. A pink ribbon...A fire of thoughts consumed Kadaj's mind in a flash of connection.

He had seen his blonde brother wearing one of these as well. That means this little girl had a connection with Cloud!

"There was this woman," Loz began, excitedly. "It's too bad she wasn't chosen by Mother. I would love fighting her all day! It was fun."

"Don't talk about Tifa!" Squealed the girl. "She kicked your ugly butt!"

"Shut up!" Loz yelled back at her. "You better be happy I like you, or I'd be hurting you!"

If Kadaj hadn't been more concentrated on his thoughts of Cloud, he would have been more intrigued by Loz's actual _like_ of someone, especially someone of such obvious rebellion of Mother. Kadaj could sense much of the traitor's ways in her spirit…

"Enough!" Kadaj broke in. "We have more important things to attend to…"

The two quieted. Both hung their heads like punished children. It looked odd on Loz, being a man of his physical stature. However, when Yazoo came to join them on their side of the pool, for he had left the new children of Mother on the opposite side of the pool, he laid at Kadaj's feet a large trunk filled with gleaming orbs.

"For once Loz found something of use to us," Yazoo chuckled.

"Hey!" Loz rumbled back, whilst pulling the girl to him.

"With these materia," Kadaj said to them all, "Our black sheep of the family will have a much harder time getting in our and Mother's way."

Kadaj smiled almost manically as he brought a blue materia to his forearm, letting them merge.

His brothers and the girl were silent, watching Kadaj with each of their expressions thoughtful (The girl's also slightly frightened, she even clung tightly to Loz's leg.).  
>"Now," Kadaj purred, "to greet our family."<p>

Kadaj made his way over to the water's edge, his thoughts swirling in glee at the thought of trumping Cloud at something else. A nagging feeling weighed over his mind. To one accustomed to more human titles of emotion and feelings, Kadaj would have called it nostalgia. Kadaj's felt a slight squeeze around his heart, the emotion threatening to engulf him there as well. Fortunately, in his mind, after years in the confines of his brown sac, he had mastered his emotions. Being put through torturous experiments, beaten, and hidden away from the world except from his fellow science specimens, made it so. It was to survive. Yet, this nagging feeling would not completely leave Kadaj's being. Something deeper was causing this, something beyond even Mother. Kadaj annoyed by the unwelcome and foreign feelings, ignored them, and proceed to begin his campaign for Mother, Jenova, at last.

Kadaj began in grandeur: "Mother has given me a very special gift…"

**If you find anything grammatically incorrect, or just something that sounds off, please don't hesitate to point it out to me. I am in need of the criticism. Thank you for reading :)**


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